


Walls Run Red

by EclipseWing



Series: Supernatural Mix-Tape [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Canon-Compliant, Gen, Hallucinations, PTSD, Post-Hell Dean, Self-harm (sort-of), So I was wondering how Dean knew how to deal with hallucinations, and anyway I wanted some more post-hell angst for Dean, and figured it was probably to do with Hell, but what if he had them too at one point in time, especially s4 where Sam's off screwing Ruby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-07 05:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7702951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EclipseWing/pseuds/EclipseWing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to Dean's mind, where shadows talk, bones have eyes and the walls run red on Tuesdays.</p><p>Canon compliant look at Dean's PTSD post-Hell: what if he had hallucinations too?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walls Run Red

**Author's Note:**

> I got bored of this half-way through, but I finished it off. Sort-of. That might explain why the ending is a bit scattered.

The mirror is steamed up. It fogs up the distorted reflection of the motel bathroom until Dean can barely see the grime and off-white tiles that cling to the wall.

He wipes at the fog with his hand. Condensation gathers into big fat droplets and roll down the glass. His reflection stares back, already fogging up.

His eyes look white in the mist.

The motel bed next to his is empty. Cold. It hasn't been slept in. Sam's not in and Dean pretends that he hasn't noticed.

His twisted reflection stares back at him through the fog and it's more real than reality ever was.

The walls are bleeding.

Dean turns off the light and goes back to sleep. In the morning Sam is there.

Dean doesn't ask where he went last night. Sam doesn't offer anything.

 

He tells them he doesn't remember Hell.

Bobby believes him.

Sam doesn't.

"What were _you_ dreaming about?" Castiel knows too, watching him with too-blue eyes. He's not even real, and Dean startles awake to an empty room, Sam snoozing on the couch and no angel.

It's cold and Dean grabs another blanket. It doesn't help, a bone-deep iciness in his flesh that he can't shake. He relocates his position on the floor nearer to the dying lick of Bobby's fireplace.

He curls up in the shadows of the flicking flames and the one side of his face feels slightly burnt but it's the most comfortable he's been since he crawled out of his own grave.

 

The first time he hears the shadows talk he's thankfully alone. He turns around and suddenly he's there, form cloaked in ash and embers and pressing Dean to the wall.

"Hello Dean," he purrs, "Miss me?" and Dean's baring his throat and going limb before he even realises he's doing it.

He pushes the true-form demon away, going for the knife. His hand closes around the bone hilt and he spins around, knife out and ready and--

There's nothing there.

 

The second time it happens Sam is there. Dean's driving the car and he just about manages not to swerve off the road when he sees the demon lounging in the back seat. The reflection tilts, revealing white-eyes carved out of bone.

Sam doesn't notice. Dean doubts Sam sees anything at all, but he can't drive like this. He pulls over, claiming he needs a pit stop. Sam indignantly shouts something about a rest-stop being just down the highway but Dean's already out of earshot.

The shadow slams him into a tree. Bark scratches at his back where his shirt rides up. Long fingers curl around his wrists and pin them in place.

Obediently Dean stops moving.

"Did you think you could run? From me? That's _adorable_ …"

His breath is hot against Dean's neck. Like the furnace of a nuclear reactor, ozone cloaked figure burning up right next to him. He's heat and warmth and sulphur-taint. His hands are sticky with blood and tar and leave bruising smears of the stuff in circles around his wrist. He drops one hand, fingers trailing through Dean's hair and cupping his cheek, leaving trails of gore in their wake. He tilts his head, so close.

_You know what comes next_

Dean turns his head just that inch and meets Alistair in a gasoline-stained kiss. He can still taste it on his tongue when Sam turns to him from the shotgun seat and remarks, "We need to stop for gas - there's a motel and gas station half a mile up ahead."

Dean's still driving. He never even left the car.

There's a shadow coiled in the back seat and Dean purposely doesn't look at it.

He can still taste the gasoline.

 

"Oh Dean," Alistair croons, "Didn’t you know? Haven't you worked it out yet?"

"Worked what out?" Dean chokes out, and Alistair presses down on him, dominating him, pressing down and grinding into him like he's nothing. Like he's there to be used and thrown away.

"This?" the demon licks blood and bile up his neck, "This isn't real."

Dean presses his eyes closed because maybe he can trick himself out of this. "I know that," he says, he knows it's a hallucination but that doesn't stop it feeling like his mentor is actually there, actually pinning him to the bed with clawed hands and white eyes and--

"Oh, that's not what I meant," the demon croons, and he's got one hand on Dean's cock and the other scratching slowly through Dean's flesh and muscle to the bone beneath, "I meant… this isn't real. Reality's boring after all," his breath is sulphur and the sickly-sweet smell of tar in Dean's ear, "You didn't think we'd let you go that easily, did you?"

"What?" Dean lurches, and all he manages to do is increase that conflicting pleasure-pain and the feel of the demon pressed down on him.

"Oh, sweetheart. You didn't really think you were out of Hell, did you?"

The walls are bleeding.

Dean wakes in a cold sweat and his pants uncomfortably tight.

Sam doesn't notice because Sam isn't even in the motel.

 

He learns to tell the difference.

It's important he learns. Alistair's shadowy demon-form leans in the bathroom doorway and Dean almost shoots him. Then his vision blurs and it's Sam and he's lucky Sam's on his phone and doesn't notice Dean pointing the gun at him.

The gun drops hidden into the sheets and Sam's still looking at the goddamn phone--

Three guesses who is on the other end and the first two don't count.

He finds a method by accident. He and Sam are clearing out a poltergeist. Sam's upstairs with his set of hex bags while Dean's downstairs. Alistair is carving bloody patterns into the walls and as the plaster cracks under the razor, Dean's skin splits open with an imprint of the same wound.

The spirit is throwing furniture at him, and the knife rack contents whistles past his head.

He moves too slowly and one slices his cheek.

The pain is fresh. It's clear and it's there in a way pain hasn't been for a long time. It shakes him, sends him reeling. It's just a knife wound, it shouldn't have this much effect but--

Alistair's gone. Or whatever his sick brain is telling him is Alistair.

His cut stings, but it's clear and fresh and for once Dean's head is not fuzzy with things that don't exist. His cheek stings but it's the only wound. No sigils on his torso. No twirling runes wrapping around his neck like a collar.

He barely even realises he's digging his fingers into the wound on his cheek. Not at least until he finishes planted the hex bags and meets up with Sam and his little brother notices the cut. "Sideboard?" he asks, because it's not a clean cut. Not anymore, it's jagged and open and--

There is blood under Dean's nails and he nods and says, "Sideboard."

 

The next time Alistair appears Dean cuts himself across the wrist. It's the first and only time he cuts himself like that on purpose. To test his theory.

There is no shadow looming over him, and despite being triumphant, he's oddly disappointed.

In the future he keeps the scars in places people won't see.

 

Ruby gives him a funny look when Alistair shows up in the church and he claws his nails over the handprint on his shoulder. He's picking it away bit by bit, and this fresh raking pain doesn't do anything to make the man before him disappear.

Ah crap.

 

He's almost disappointed by the form Alistair has actually taken on earth. A paediatrician, he says, and the man is pale flesh and clothes hanging off him and Alistair is right.

Reality is so limited.

The dentist is more to what Dean remembers. He's got the same crooning voice, or maybe that's just because of the demon riding the form. But when Alistair tears his way free of the devil's trap and slams Dean into the wall he realises it makes no difference. There's a _shadow_ in the man and it _is_ the man and it _is._

"Left part of yourself back in the pit," his mentor croons, "Let's see if we can put the two of you back together again, shall we?" and Dean wants to laugh because sure, something is missing, but there isn't space to put anything back because Alistair's already clambered in there, curled his way between his ribs and heart and made himself at home in his flesh but he can't laugh because he's choking, his throat is being crushed, larynx cartilage torn as the pressure increases pain sliding into bliss and--

Dean's voice is never quite the same afterwards. It's dropped from a honey-smooth rumble to whiskey-rough rasp and Sam flinches for a week afterwards.

Dean doesn't. Sam and Cas both tell him Alistair is gone and Dean doesn't know how to tell them that's he's not. He's in Dean's voice every time he speaks, he's carved into Dean's flesh and muscle, he's lurking in Dean's shadow and in the whites of his eyes.

"It's okay, sweetheart," Alistair tells him, "I would never leave and let some substitute teacher take over your lessons now, would I?"

"No," Dean replies, voice sandpaper and gravel and Sam turns to him from where he had been frowning over his phone.

"What?"

"Nothing."

 

Sam and Dean keep secrets. Sam and Dean fight. There might have been a siren’s venom burning through their veins but it was a long time coming anyway. Dean wins that fight, tackling Sam through a door.

“Rip him open,” Alistair whispers to him, hand curled around Dean’s chest in the mockery of a loving embrace. Clawed fingernails scratch marks across Dean’s no-demons-allowed tattoo. In the reflection in the glass of the fire hammer Alistair’s form bleeds away to something hell torn and violent.

Dean shatters the reflection, but Alistair’s laugh still echoes in his ears as he hefts the axe over his brother. The laugh is high pitched, cruel, twisted and it only vanishes when Bobby slices his shoulder.

Sam wins the next fight their in. His brother’s breath smells like sulphur and desperation and this is what John must have been warning him about all those years ago. He was meant to save Sam. Save him or kill him.

Dean can’t save Sam.

Neither can he kill him.

He’s already failed.

 

He wakes choking on a scream. It gets stuck in his chest and he can't breathe, eyes watering. His fingers shake and his legs are weak. He can barely stand, barely claw himself to

He wakes choking on a scream. Choking so hard his chest burns, eyes water. His hands shake, rustling the covers as he throws them off, but they're soaked through with sweat and don't make a sound. His legs barely hold him. He's never felt so weak, but he doesn't scream. He doesn't cry. He doesn't whine. He doesn't even wake Sam in the bed closer to the door.

That’s because Sam’s not there. There’s no Sam, Sam’s taking a break, Sam betrayed him and ditched him, used him up and--

A heavy weight settles at his back, sulphur on his breath and razor blades for fingers. Dean’s breath hitches then calms.

Sleep comes then, but if he dreams or not, Dean doesn’t remember.

 

It’s the Apocalypse and Dean’s slowly losing his mind.

Sam’s dreaming about Lucifer in his sleep. Dean’s dreams haunt him when he’s awake but he keeps silent.

“You’re weak. You’re holding me back. Whining about all the souls you tortured in hell, boo hoo,” Sam tells him in the back of his mind.

“Stop whining,” the angels tell him, “Don’t tell us ‘you can’t do it’.”

Dean’s always been good at keeping silent, since he watched his mother burn on the ceiling when he was four. He’d kept silent for a year after that. He’d kept silent after hell too.

He keeps silent now and tries to focus on a way to kill the Devil.

Alistair whispers suggestions and advice into his ears and Dean digs his nails into his palm until all he can hear is his own ragged breathing.

 

Heaven's faded photographs and empty spaces. Dean's Heaven is filled with Mary's smiles and Sam's laughter.

Sam's Heaven doesn't have Dean in it.

"Mary, Mary," Alistair sings to him, "Quite contrary, how do your murders go? With picked clean bones and old tombstones and little girls all in a row," his clawed hand wraps in a loving embrace around Dean.

Then he blinks and Alistair is gone.

Dean's still waiting for the moment he pulls Sam through a door from a memory of fireworks and stars into warm fires and blood. He's still waiting for the moment he passes through a doorway into Hell.

It's a best memory reel, right? So shouldn't it be there somewhere?

Hell was freedom. Hell was absolution.

It doesn't happen. Dean doesn't know if he's relieved or secretly disappointed.

 

Then Gabriel happens. He gives them the clue, the clue to the key quite literally that will lock Lucifer away.

And so they do. Sam jumps into the Pit with the Devil and the Devil’s older brother and Dean keeps his promise and does nothing. He watches. He bleeds and struggles to breath in the grass where the entrance had been.

Castiel heals him and then vanishes, leaving Dean alone alone alone in a graveyard.

He doesn’t talk about Sam. He barely talks at all. He goes to Lisa’s. He promised Sam after all, but there’s something missing. Something broken. He wakes from nightmares to see Lisa staring at him with wide-eyes and the sheets red from where he’s clawed himself bloody.

He hunts. Then he goes back and pretends everything is normal, like he doesn’t have Hell in his shadow.

The Campbell’s mock him when they turn up. Dean picks at a scab and Alistair scratches a new sigil into Dean’s shoulder while deciding which ring of Hell each cousin would end up in. And Sam…

Sam walks about like nothing ever happened, like he wasn’t in the pit with Lucifer, like he’s fine, like it was just a vacation. He walks about sane and normal and Dean…

Dean hates him for that, just a little.

 

“It’s not real,” Dean tells Sam a year later. Sam’s got the Devil in his head whispering sweet nothings and Dean’s got Hell’s Master Torturer beneath his skin. He keeps trying to cut the pieces of Alistair out but he never gets very far. He teaches Sam how to keep Lucifer at bay, how to determine reality.

Sam never asks how he knows what to do.

Sam gets worse. He lets the visions swamp him, lets them take over. Dean doesn’t know how to explain to him that it’s easier to just let it happen, that the fighting is what is going to get Sam killed.

He learned long ago it’s easier to just let them blend.

Then Castiel heals Sam and restores the status quo and it's just Dean again, with white-eyes in the shadows.

 

“He’s a bit self-centred, that brother of yours.”

“Don’t,” he’s tired. Purgatory he’d thought had killed the hallucinations but Sam--

“He didn’t even look for you,” the white-eyed shadow leans on him. Dean can feel him, feel the claws slicing into him and he flinches away, only for a vice grip on his wrist to keep him there, twisting him and slamming him into the wall, “How much does baby brother really care about you?”

“He…” Dean doesn’t have words, doesn’t have an argument, “We agreed not to look for each other.”

It sounds weak and fake even to him.

“Really?” Alistair laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard in a long time. He doesn’t say anything else, but he doesn’t have to. Because Dean knows already that he’s not prepared to let Sam go. He went to Hell for Sam once.

Does Sam really think Dean wouldn’t go there again to bring him back?

“Just… go away,” Dean’s tired. He doesn’t want to do this now, “You’re dead. You… Sam choked you out of existence.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” Alistair runs his tongue along the arch of Dean’s shoulder, “But we both know that it’s not that simple. Just like you know Lucifer left more of a scar on Sam’s soul. He left an imprint. I’m not a hallucination, Dean, you know that.”

Dean closes his eyes and grits his teeth and--

"Dean?" Sam asks, appearing in the doorway to motel with two coffees and two pastries in a bag, "Who were you talking to?"

Dean leans into the warmth of the demon behind him, and Alistair tucks his head into the hollow of Dean's shoulder, "Nobody," Dean says, and when he turns around there is nobody there.

He's telling the truth.

Welcome to Dean's mind, where shadows talk, bone has eyes and the walls run red on Tuesdays.

 

“Go away.”

"No can do kiddo," Alastair smirks, fingers trailing along Dean’s right arm. "Nice mark."

Dean tightens his grip on the table ignoring it. He'd been a master at doing this.

"I don't know why you like to pretend I don't exist. After all, I never really left. There's a bit of your soul I carved out just for me."

He remembers a time when Sam had been haunted by his own hallucinations of Lucifer, and how he advised Sam to cope with them, Alastair laughing in his ear.

Then in Purgatory somewhere between the endless fighting and running the demon had gone, had been lost back in that blood lust forest and Dean had come out, ready and willing to face the world.

But now he's there, white eyes leering at him, and Sam's shaking his head. "I wouldn't." he says, “If I was in your place… I wouldn’t…” and Dean's world crumbles.

Alistair laughs.

The walls are bleeding.


End file.
